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Comment by scarface74 | Hacker News Reader

Does this mean .NET framework is being dropped slowly for new projects?

Yes.

It's not a secret. Microsoft has said that .Net Framework is basically in maintenance mode and "will move slower". They are moving EF6, Winforms, and WPF to .Net Core (Windows only).

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/dotnet/2018/10/04/update-on...

I've been developing on top of Microsoft environments for over 20 years and .Net is by far my favorite language. But, the writing is on the wall. Anyone who wants a long term career in development needs to run away from Windows as fast as possible and slowly move away from focusing exclusively on .Net.

Linux even dominates on Azure.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-now-dominates-azure/

Microsoft knows that Windows can't compete in the cloud and selling Windows for desktops is not the future.

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I will keep holding on to .NET and Java, regardless of ongoing issues, until an alternative is able to match at least half of the existing tooling, libraries and supported platforms.

From my point of view the grass is still greener in this side.

Parent post was confusingly worded.

he's saying windows as a programming platform is dead. You can keep .Net and Java, its just going to be .Net core and Java, and its going to run on linux machines.

Its a matter of time until Visual Studio runs on linux, but that's the direction they're heading. Visual Studio Code already does

he's saying windows as a programming platform is dead

Not exactly. I'm saying that Windows as a deployment platform is dead. You can keep developing on Windows and deploy to Linux. I do it all of the time.

I'm not convinced this is the case. MS is developing various alternatives to Linux, such as a CLI only version, and a version with a different faster kernel.

But I agree that frameworks which can ONLY deploy to Windows (.Net Framework) will die in favor of those that are cross platform (.Net Core).

What competitive advantage does Microsoft gain by having a non GUI server OS? That just becomes a more expensive server OS than Limux.

Tooling and Windows still does a couple of things better than most UNIXes.

Windows Server Core 2016 has barely any usage. Nano Server came and died, basically being an empty shell that can only be a base image for Windows containers.

Linux won a long time ago and is so far ahead in tooling and ecosystem support that it just isn't worth it to compete in the server OS space. And that's better for everyone since we can consolidate effort and products.

I don't fully agree that a Linux monoculture, or even a POSIX one, is better for everyone.

Like every monoculture things either stagnate, or we start getting features just to work around botherom instead of actual innovation.

I wouldn't be surprised to see VS Code replacing VS entirely. Visual Studio is built on WPF and it's probably as massive of an effort to port all that over as it is to bring Code up to snuff.

The Electron pleasure.

I tremble to imagine how many cores and GBs would be needed to have VSCode with the same capabilities of Visual Studio Ultimate, while running at comparable performance.

VSCode has performance sensitive bits (such as file search) written in Rust and (I believe) C++, so it's not out of the question...

I am forced to use it in a couple of projects and fast it is not.

Specially when comparing with the likes of Sublime, which I gladly payed for.

Will never, ever happen. Electron is not feasible, and moreover, the VS team is not going to rewrite all their funcionality, when they can't even give us a 64 bit VS.

> when they can't even give us a 64 bit VS

Wouldn't that encourage a switch to a totally new system? If you have to do a ton of ground-up work to get VS working 64 bit, you could argue you as well expend the same effort in getting VS Code to a level where it can be used instead of VS.

I dunno, people have been hoping for a 64-bit VS for like a decade. The excuses have been unconvincing.

What are the reasons for wanting 64-bit?

Microsoft's semi-official stance on why VS isn't 64 bit...

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/ricom/2015/12/29/revisiting...

I thought this was crap three years ago, and I think it is worse now.

Because?

Because solutions and IDE functionality is getting more complex and processes needs access to more RAM, which is cheap and plentiful and pointless to not use. Saying that every extension should be its own process isn't sufficient and ignores the extra complexity, inefficiency and resources that approach takes.

What's worse is that VS doesn't even follow its own recommendations. Even with the massive upgrades over the past year, it's still extremely slow and laggy on any sizable solution.

Actually being its own process it is something I came to agree upon.

In process plugins look cool, but they just bring everything down when they misbehave, plus it is another opportunity for exploits.

Peformance can be improved by actually writing the plugins in languages that compile to native code and eventually use shared memory.

Now if one uses node for everything naturally it doesn't scale.

Visual Studio depends heavily on WPF and COM. I don't think it's going to be running on Linux anytime soon.

There is already a version for Mac from Microsoft.

https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/mac/

And there is always JetBrains Rider for Linux

https://www.jetbrains.com/rider/

Visual Studio for Mac is just Xamarin Studio rebranded, not really related to VS for windows.

There are two separate trends with the direction that the industry is going. One trend is moving faster than the other.

Windows -> Linux: Using Windows on the server is a dead end. Every time I have to use anything Windows based, especially in the cloud, it's a double hit -- the same compute resources cost more because of licensing and you need more resources to run Windows. I can't imagine why anyone starting a project today would tie themselves to Windows. Even if you like Windows and .Net as a development platform (I do), it makes no sense to deploy to Windows if you don't have to.

.Net Core -> Javascript Everywhere. I hate the trend as much as anyone, but, I don't see .Net Core getting much adoption for greenfield projects unless their developers are already .Net users. Even the more career driven .Net developers are moving toward Node for resume reasons.

Out of the two, it's career suicide to focus solely on Windows. .Net Core has a longer shelf life and you can remain marketable if you know .Net (Core/Framework) + Windows and Linux

There are plenty of Windows shops out there using Windows servers.

Also the cloud is still a foreign word to many companies.

Finally, every time I have to touch Node eco-system it saddens me, npm gets several thousand modules for a plain Hello World and lets not pretend V8 is the same performance ballpark as using a strongly typed language that can be AOT/JIT to native code, with real multi-core support.

I'm not arguing that Windows is dead. But, I think you will see your career stagnate at best if you focus solely on Windows.

I'm also not arguing that every company will eventually go to the cloud or that every company will move toward Node. But, staying in the MS ecosystem will also lead to career stagnation. I'm nowhere near the west coast and I'm mostly your bog standard "Enterprise Developer/Architect". But the minute I put "AWS","Linux","Node" on my LinkedIn profile, the more serious discussions I had with consulting companies (not recruiters) with offers of $20K-$30K more than companies were offering "Windows Enterprise Developers"

Here in Europe most enterprises are pretty much focused on Java/.NET.

Plus as you notice from my comments I do polyglot development, and luckily there are other options than spending 8h with Node every day.

Also building up soft skills and domain knowledge is another way to keep relevant, while staying on the same stack.

Agreed on Windows -> Linux. Disagree on .NET. I think that .NET has just opened up a HUGE market by 1. open sourcing and 2. working on linux.

I know that I was completely uninterested in learning it while it was a Microsoft proprietary project. But that was always a shame because from a language perspective, it's exquisitely designed. Now that's free'd up, I expect a lot more adoption.

Node is great, but it's actually pretty slow. And it doesn't have anything to compete with Rails/Laravel/Django/ASP.NET MVC which are still super-productive.

- Yours, a Frontend/Node/Python/PHP Dev.

I hope C# does become more popular outside of large enterprises, but I am not seeing it yet. I’m not abandoning it but I am adding Node to my tool belt just to play it safe.

.NET isn't going anywhere, it's just going to be Core.

Linux even dominates on Azure.

This has more to do with per hour billing. Over the long term no company wants to pay 2x for the same compute resources that they don't need to maintain.

For the on-premise enterprise you will continue to see sizable market share with Windows Server for the foreseeable future, since those companies already have Windows-trained sysadmins to manage them (along with their huge inventory of Windows corporate desktops).

And that's an issue for Windows sysadmins. They are a commodity. They are cheap compared to Linux admins and are easily outsourced.

Then what do companies need Linux guys for? If what you say is true, there's a large incentive for the industry to put you guys next on the chopping block by similarly lowering the complexities of Linux, or improving the Windows ecosystem to do everything else at least as well as Linux can.

Microsoft’s future is in the cloud. They don’t really care if you use Windows Servers anymore. They have no real motivation to make Windows lightweight enough to compete with Linux.

But I’m not a “Linux guy” yet. I’m trying to move up to being an overpriced “consultant” that tells companies how they can save money via automation, using best Devops practices, etc. and why they don’t need as many infrastructure people.

I’m a software architect who plays the role of an AWS Architect when necessary.

> Microsoft’s future is in the cloud. They don’t really care if you use Windows Servers anymore.

The Azure guys will happily tell you that they believe the best way to automate and run Linux servers is as VMs and containers on Windows Servers.

I wish they would open source Winforms and/or WPF, both technologies could do with some love.

Effectively, this is what is happening now AFAIK, as they're being ported over to .NET Core, which is open source.

No they aren't. They are porting WinForms and WPF to Core but keeping them closed source.

I believe MS said they're considering open sourcing them when they're included in .Net Core 3.0. But either they didn't decided yet, or they decided against it.

> They are moving EF6, Winforms, and WPF to .Net Core (Windows only).

What about webforms? I haven't been able to find any info on that one.

> and .Net is by far my favorite language.

Isn't .NET the runtime/environment and C# the language?

Yes, colloquially people use them interchangeably.

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